These are basically the ugliest pasteles you have ever seen. In the US I never had to make them, I could just eat the ones M's cousin made. Here, I don't know what's making me all cocinera Salvadoreña, but I have a long list of foods I want to try and make. Salvadoran pasteles are like empanadas, but usually orangish colored cause you put achiote in the masa. Well I tried soaking the achiote in water, and it did turn orange, but when I mixed it, it imparted no orange color =( These are filled with chicken and mixed vegetables. They should be media luna shaped but clearly...this was my first time. I brought them to my friends at the locutorio who said it didn't matter how ugly they were, they taste good. I think they'll eat whatever I bring them though. Next on my list to try and make are arepas, which aren't Salvadoran but Colombian/Venezuelan. It looks like you make them similarly to pupusas though and the señora in the locutorio sold me a different masa to try and make them, so we'll see how it goes.
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My columbian friend T brought me some arepas at work. Her Mom had brought them to her from a small grocery in Florida as a special treat.
I told her I eat these all the time! She asked me where I get them. I said cheesecake factory makes them and sells them dressed up a lot more with guac and sour cream and calls them 'sweet corn tamale cakes'!!
Now, her and her columbian mother love the ones at cheesecake factory.
Mom, I was just telling this other blogger that I needed a recipe for corn tamales, you should pass it along to T.
http://latinaish.com/2011/12/10/tamales-de-elote-tamales-fritos/
And I don't know why I never thought to google a copycat recipe for Cheesecake Factory's sweet corn tamale cakes! I just found this one and the ingredients for the actual tamales themselves are essentially the same. Just the method of cooking them is different.
http://www.food.com/recipe/sweet-corn-tamale-cakes-295029
I may be wrong, but the 'elote' are the Mexico version and have more sugar in them? sugar is optional.
Also, no time nowto find it again as it is in my work email - but when I was looking I found 2 cf versions and one was a 'shortcut' version with a different cooking method. We decided we liked the actual 'cf' recipe method best.
elote is just the Spanish word for corn, specifically the ear of corn, like corn on the cob.
Tamales de elote come in lots of variations but I like the semi sweet ones best. The ones in El Salvador weren't very sweet at all and were super dense but I think that's cause their corn is a different variety.
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